Two Parkland shooting survivors die in apparent suicides, police say

MIAMI - A student at the Florida high school where 17 people were killed in a mass shooting last year apparently took his own life Saturday, police said. It was the second apparent suicide in the span of a week involving a student survivor of the shooting in Parkland, a community still reeling from the aftermath of the massacre.

Officers in Coral Springs, Florida, responded Saturday night to the apparent suicide of a minor who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Officer Tyler Reik, a police spokesman, confirmed Sunday. He said the death was still under investigation.

Ryan Petty, who lost his daughter Alaina during the massacre at Stoneman Douglas on Feb. 14, 2018, said the child who died Saturday was a 16-year-old boy. Petty alluded to the boy’s death in a Twitter post late Saturday, in which he wrote “17+2” with an emoji of a broken heart.

“What we feared could happen is happening,” Petty said in an interview.

The foundation that he created in his daughter’s memory held an event last May trying to raise awareness about suicide prevention.

Another teenager, Sydney Aiello, 19, a recent Stoneman Douglas graduate, took her own life last weekend, her mother Cara Aiello told the local CBS television affiliate. Aiello told the station that her daughter had received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, and that Sydney suffered from survivor’s guilt after the shooting, in which one of her best friends, Meadow Pollack, had died.

News of Sydney Aiello’s death spread quickly, drawing tens of thousands of dollars to a webpage for donations for the young woman’s funeral and memorial. It also started a discussion in Parkland - more than a year after the shooting - about preventing suicide and offering long-term resources to young people who have continued to struggle to cope with their trauma and loss.

Sunday marked the anniversary of the March For Our Lives that students organized around the world to rally against gun violence following the horror in Parkland.

Public officials met Sunday afternoon to discuss a unified effort to assist children and families in light of the two apparent suicides. They identified several locations to offer therapeutic services or information about how to obtain them.

“It’s important that the community knows right now how to triage this - to make sure they’re checking in with their kids, checking in with their family members,” said Mayor Christine Hunschofsky of Parkland. “It’s important, if people have firearms at home, that they’re locked up and secured, so no one who shouldn’t have access to them is able to gain access to them.”

Dr. Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University who helped lead a suicide prevention event in Parkland last year, has developed a protocol of questions that anyone - not just medical professionals - can ask to identify people who may be at risk of suicide. Suicide is preventable, she emphasized, but it requires ending the stigma surrounding depression and mental illness, and not waiting for people who are hurting to speak up on their own.

“They don’t necessarily have the will to come and ask for help,” Posner said. “We should be asking these questions the way we monitor blood pressure.”

The Broward County Public Schools brought in counselors and therapy dogs for Stoneman Douglas students immediately after the shooting last year. But those crisis services were insufficient for some students and teachers, who sought additional help on their own.

At the start of the 2018-19 school year last fall, the school district advertised the continuing operation of a “resiliency center” at a park in Parkland, with counselors and support groups for families. That center remains open, including this week, when local public schools will be closed for spring break.

The year since the mass shooting has been tumultuous. The community has grappled with how to hold public officials accountable for the slew of missed warning signs displayed before the attack by the gunman, who is awaiting trial for capital murder. Just last week, the school district placed the principal of Stoneman Douglas under investigation to review his actions related to the shooting. The district superintendent, Robert W. Runcie, managed to stave off an effort by some school board members to remove him earlier this month.

“We have these documentary film people coming and saying, ‘Oh, the community is coming together,’ and kind of putting a beautiful bow on it,” Hunschofsky said. “And there’s a lot of good going on in our community. But we cannot ignore what else is happening.”

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(If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.)